Getting Away With It

A few weeks ago, I met up with a friend I hadn’t talked to in over a year.

He was going through some tough stuff in his marriage, and it was overflowing emotional backwash into all areas of his life. I reached out to him a couple of times to let him know I was thinking about him (code for praying for him…) and offered an audible book on marriage. I texted “I know you’re going through a hard time. Everything I would say to you this book says. I hope you can read it.” I included a link to the book in the text.

After that, he ghosted me.

After about a year, he had some breakthroughs and realizations with the help of a counselor. He texted me back - ending the ghosting. He apologized and suggested we get together to talk some more. I thanked him for the text and said we could get together in a few weeks when I would be in his area.

We met for coffee. It was good to see him and I forgot how much I cared about him. We spent the first 30 minutes or so talking about fun stuff like triathlons, running and Covid 19 (is that fun to talk about?).

Suddenly he switched conversational gears and apologized for ghosting me. He offered no excuses - he just apologized. We kept talking about what he had been going through the last year. He shared some pain, some discoveries and some ways he had grown.

I asked him about his time of self-imposed isolation. I wasn’t the only one he ghosted. He did it to a few good friends. His reasons for doing this were both simple and complex, but basically he said he ghosted us because he could. And when he did it, we did the same thing in return. That surprised him. He basically learned that he could “get away with it.”

That grabbed me. It was a perfect storm of masculine isolation.

One of my personal mantras is that personal isolation leads to personal desolation. My friend definitely was a case study for that! But our conversation haunted me a little.

• He made the choice to ghost me.

• I offered myself to him and he declined.

• I don’t like to force myself on people.

• Did I give up too early?

• Did I ghost him too?

As I have thought through those questions, I think I've learned some things too. I could have made a greater effort to stay connected with him during his hard time. I could have pushed a little harder into our relationship rather than pulling away from it.

Eventually we did come back together. And maybe that was part of his process. Maybe he needed the space, and the desolation, in order to grow. But I could have been braver and stronger too.

I want these blog posts to have some answers and encouragements and not just questions. This one has a lot of questions, so here are some encouragements on how to be braver and stronger together:

• Always reach out to your friends.

• When they cut you off, acknowledge it -- I didn’t.

• Let them know you’re still their friend and you’re still available to chat.

• Let them know frequently and regularly that you are thinking of them.

• Watch for opportunities to re-engage and reach out.

Remember that personal isolation almost always leads to personal desolation. Desolation is a really lonely and really dangerous place.